


On My Own

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [75]
Category: Dollhouse, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Crossover, Multi, not actually RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 16:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6292273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: <i>any, any, On My Own (Les Miserables).</i> Joe and John post-cloning. Set post-series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On My Own

Joe first realized he was completely alone the moment he opened his eyes in the base infirmary at the SGC. Rodney, Jennifer, Topher, John, Dr. Lam, and General Landry were all standing around his hospital bed, staring at him. He cringed under the scrutiny, reached out for comfort from Traci, but she wasn't there. None of them were there. Not Brian or Brendan or Pianist or Songwriter or –  
  
John first realized he was missing something vital, something part of himself when Bill Lee burst into the infirmary and said, "Colonel Sheppard, look at this for me," and thrust a page of equations under his nose and John couldn't understand them. It was like getting to the top of a staircase and taking one step too many and stumbling because there was nothing there to step on.  
  
"I –" John blinked. "You might have to ask Joe." He stepped aside, and Bill stared at Joe for a moment, a carbon copy of John, from the tips of his disheveled hair to his crooked left pinkie toe, and then pounced on him with the math before Lam and Jennifer could fend him off.  
  
Joe realized what _on your own_ really meant the first time he was left alone in the infirmary while everyone else returned to their duties or went to get lunch. _Are you sure you want to do this?_ John had asked. _If you do this, you're on your own._ And Joe had said, _I'm sure._ But suddenly he wasn't, because he was completely alone, and the world was silent. He didn't know what to do with his hands. With the others he could have knit or drawn or done some origami or maybe played the guitar or the piano, but on his own he was just...Joe. He'd been good at tying knots and tossing hay bales and could move pipe and shovel manure like nobody's business, but he'd never been really good at anything with his hands. Just his mind, and even then – He reached out, grabbed the napkin off his discarded lunch tray, found a pen one of the nurses had left behind, and started tinkering with P=NP, because if he thought fast enough, thought hard enough, there were numbers in his head filling the silence.  
  
John realized what _missing Joe_ really meant not the fiftieth time one of the scientists came to him for a math question and had to be sent away but the first time he sat opposite Joe in the mess hall and watched him eat primly, with a knife and fork, where John had always eschewed the continental thing and eaten with just a fork, and not with the fork upside down. He didn't know what was going on in Joe's head. He thought Joe was tired and a little nervous, but he couldn't read the expressions on Joe's face, because it wasn't his face anymore. So if Joe followed him all over the base for the rest of his stay there (Jennifer and Lam insisted that they wanted to monitor him for a day just in case, even though by all reports he was perfectly healthy), if Joe left the radio on whenever he was alone so there were just voices, John understood it, because he hated coming up short when he was thinking and the places were Joe should have answered were silent.  
  
So, when the time finally came for Joe to go home, to really go home for the first time, to step inside his living space as his own person, John left him to it. Tried not to hover too closely.  
  
Apparently Joe's solution for coping with the disorientation of being himself for the first time since he was nineteen was to seduce Evan, emotionally devastate him, and then make it better all in about the space of twelve hours.  
  
John's solution for coping with the sudden missing of Joe was to ache fiercely for Rodney, avoid Rodney whenever he was being cute with Jennifer, and retreat into his mind with the other imprints, let one of them take over on autopilot, practice a hobby or two while Brian and Traci and Brendan and Julian tried to make him feel better. And it almost worked, John was almost okay with using a calculator for math when he needed to, almost okay with seeing Joe across from him at the kitchen table at breakfast and dinner, and then Rodney had to go and get himself hit by a bus.


End file.
